To be glad schools are finally hitting back

I agree that uniform is unnecessary and an anachronism, and that strict and petty uniform rules are infuriating and counterproductive.

However, I'm intrigued by people saying that teachers prefer to just carry on punishing kids for petty stuff because they're too lazy to bother with trying to deal with the serious stuff. That isn't true and makes no sense.

Having to enforce petty uniform rules is an absolute and utter pain in the arse and wastes hours of teachers' time week-in week-out. It's not fun for anyone. It's not 'light relief' from the serious stuff. We hate it. I don't personally give a shit what colour socks students wear, or whether they have mascara on!

And as for the serious stuff - what is it that you actually think teachers can do about it? We follow school behaviour policy. Kids get detentions (which parents sometimes encourage them not to turn up for). Sometimes they get internal exclusions or suspensions. The more hardened the kids, the less they care about the punishments. What other weapons do you think we have in our arsenal against serious bad behaviour? Expulsion? That's a last resort, hard to actually achieve, often gets overturned on appeal, and the kid just gets put in another school to cause the same problems. It's not teachers being lazy ffs. It's a lack of actual workable solutions!

This ^

Thank you for writing this!

The rules are stupid and they are insignificant, and they are only powerful in a society that hates to think for itself, and who thinks that obedience and lack of critical thinking are the highest values to strive for (is Stalin your idol by any chance?). You want a society where everyone does as they are told, which you admit. I want a society where everyone is respected and respects others. And you can respect people wearing jeans and a tee shirt. You dont need a buttoned up shirt and ironed trousers to be respectful.

100% agree.

The thing is the relaxed uniform guidelines apply to all state schools in scotland. Even our local secondary which is widely regarded as one of the best in the country doesn’t enforce strict policy. Yes there’s a school tie/blazer but there’s no requirement to wear them. And if you do chose too lots of swaps/hand me downs to keep costs reasonable.

Perfectly acceptable to wear a supermarket bought jumper. And like i say in theory they can’t enforce it anyway…..but interestingly you only ever see a small handful of kids not wearing something not in line with uniform.

Lots of countries with very relaxed uniform policies with much better education systems than Scotland/England

Unfortunately most people in charge of Academies are dickheads. This is why the idiotic rules so many people are describing on these threads have gained such traction.

If you look at the websites of secondary academies, you will see their Headteachers are largely white men in their very early thirties.

Many of them will have been P.E. teachers. I've got nothing against P.E. teachers and I've had plenty of lovely P.E. teacher colleagues. But the type of P.E. teacher who becomes a Headteacher very quickly is the type who has become a teacher because they enjoy power and control. They are also - and I mean no disrespect to P.E. teachers - usually not very academic.

As such, many of these schools are led by blokes who a) are not very bright b) are not very experienced and c) love having power and control over others.

This type of Head loves having nonsensical rules and they love dishing out punishments.

They do not give two shits about education or children.

All they want is an easy audience of people over whom they can wield power. In the world outside of education - in business, for example - they would not have the intellectual capacity to rise to any type of leadership position, and neither would they have the right background or people skills. In education, however, you can quickly and easily move to the top of the chain even if you're not very talented, if you are in the type of school that rewards mediocrity. They know this, which is why they become teachers. They do not become teachers for the children. In fact, I'm convinced many of them don't even like children. They just like punishing them.

Academies love hiring these mediocre mini Hitlers as Heads because Academy chains are largely owned by right wing megalomaniacs looking to make a quick buck out of education and indoctrinate a new generation of children with their right wing views. They want someone who will act as their puppet at the helm of their schools and not have the critical thinking skills to ask questions.

And so here we are, in an educational landscape where teachers are leaving education like rats off a sinking ship because we're forced to work under morons whose motivation is to control rather than educate. And students are forced to sit in rows wearing wool blazers in 30 degree heat, doing lessons from powerpoint slides created by someone in a Head Office 100 miles away, wishing they could be anywhere else and totally disengaged from their education.

Why can’t we allow students to use their own judgement on whether or not to wear their blazer, @BeachLife2? We expect them to take responsibility for having all the equipment they need, and for doing their homework and revision - but they aren’t sensible enough to know whether or not they feel too hot? When they are babies, we decide whether or not they wear a coat, but by the time they are in senior school, they are surely old enough to decide this for themselves!

As I said yesterday, I know it is anecdotal, but I have seen accounts on here from parents whose children have been refused permission to take off thick blazers during a heatwave - as if the school is prioritising how the students look over them being best able to learn - and a child who is feeling faint due to the heat, or is dripping with sweat and uncomfortable, is not going to be as effective a learner as a comfortable child - within reason, of course. I’m not advocating for kids in swimwear or nude - but taking off a blazer is surely the sort of sensible action we should be allowing children to make.

My dses went to a senior school (comprehensive) where the uniform was flexible and sensible. The students still look pretty smart, but the uniform is affordable, easy to launder and replace, and allows the children to make sensible choices of what to wear. And when we moved here, and ds1 and ds2 started at the school, it was number 7 in the Scottish league tables, so the academic performance is good too.

I just don’t see an issue if kids are allowed to wear/remove their blazer when they like.
as I mentioned previously the better secondary school in my area, that significantly outperforms the other local schools, is also the only one that doesn’t have ties or blazers in the uniform. Just basic polo tops and sweatshirts.

Why do they even have to sit in blazers, can you explain? Are you privy to any research that states that wearing a blazer makes you more intelligent or have better grades?
It's like talking to a flock of sheep, you do stuff only because other people did it in the past, but there is no reason or whatsoever to wear specific items of clothing to school. It has zero impact on learning- and learning is why kids are in school to begin with.

Bog standard doesn’t mean they’re not ridiculous. What benefit or difference to the lesson it makes having to change into specifically white PE socks? (Nevermind the impracticality of them) . Why does she need her French dictionary /apron/safety goggles on a day she doesn’t have French/other lessons that require them? Why does she need calculator, geometry kit and 2 types of rulers on a day she has Drama, Art, French, English , History and PE? And all the other stuff. Attendance, punctuality, behaviour, effort etc are all things I care about and support the school with. This other stuff? I can’t bring myself to care , even if I wanted to.

A tell the kids we know it's silly but go with it, making sure they are dressed okay nd have equipment and do homework
B fight with the school over every tiny thing for 5 years

A but when I do need a change/exception - SEN/medcial - I'd expect to be treated politely and constructively - and last few years that's not happend t's immediately defensive your causing problems being stupid etc.

Did worry it was just us but no talking to other parents it's not - and many then get combative in reponse and it takes so much time.

Sometimes they also just don't listen and seem deliberately obtuse - getting though that no they can't e-mail current Y11 on Y11 e-mail next year post setpember - as next school year that will get year below - this actually did this last year so why don't they get it and actually tell us arrangments now.

However do get the pen/pencil issue - my kids complained bitterly about this - and teacher gather up lost pens and provide ie bought from own pockets their own to hand out but 5 minutes is lost to it every lesson even if kids were given pens last lesson.

@HerNeighbourTotoro

There's absolutely no need for DC to remove blazers on the vast majority of days in the UK.

Of course headteachers can and do give permission if it's exceptionally warm.

In your workplace, do you seek your manager to ask if you can take a blazer off when it's hot?

I have been doing supply for 5 years now.
We had weird rules surrounding what colour pens kids should write with (and which colours teachers can use to mark, which included pink or whatever and which we had to buy ourselves).
In my previous school I had to spend 10 minutes of my first lesson checking equipment and then emailing all the parents of kids who didnt bring the correct number of pens/pensils etc- and to log this aas a sanction on the system, this to be done after school in my free time as I used my PPA to .. plan my lessons, as I would. Kids who could not afford equipment and those who were disorganised still didnt bring them and parents just put school emails straight in SPAM as they were so fed up with the daily communications.

In another school we had to spend breaktimes in corridors 'being visible' and asking students to sort out their uniform. 4 months of that and I didnt see any improvement, but I felt stressed as everytime I sat down I felt like an SLT will come in ans us us to go out and radiate visibility. Results were not proportionate to the tidiness of the uniform either.

One school I worked in overhauled behaviour policy halfway through the year making workload so excessive that I resigned from my long term supply role as all it created was conflict between students and their parents and teachers, and all staff knew the rules were unreasomable but had to grind out teeth and defend them in front of parents and unhappy kids. It was one of the militaristic approach of "give a detention for everything" and totally silent corridors and it made no one happy.

This was mostly an experience in the big trust academies where you have more heads and executive heads than one can imagie is necessary. I found that the few LA schools I got jobs in were far more pleasant but also less rigirous and prison-like.

It’s interesting that you find those rules ridiculous, I’d say they were bog standard 🤷‍♀️

I bloody hate blazers. In my work place they are removed unless meeting clients or in court. Polo shirt and sweatshirt, that children can be given the independence to decided whether they are hot or cold is much better IMO.

I get that there's not a lot of choice out there but some parents seem to feel so strongly about the uniform policy that I would imagine a school that strictly adheres to it would be a deal breaker and they would be prepared to compromise on distance etc.

And yes the obsession with blazers! And whether you’re allowed to take them off or on, carry them around, put them in locker in warmer days etc etc.. just get rid of them. They seem to create more problems than they solve.

Same! There is no choice!

Colour of socks, even more so when they’re specific colours for PE and normal school day, branded school PE kit (winter and summer), hair up at all times (I get the health and safety aspect in PE/DT/science), having full equipment and equipment checks every day when you don’t even have those subjects, asking permission to take a blazer off , not allowed a coat on , even on the corridors when it’s cold (and teachers are wearing theirs), that kind of stuff.

As someone says upthread, all parents have access to policies for each school. Surely you choose the school based on your preferences, and that of your child. If you think a school is too strict, then choose anothet. Dont send your child there, then complain about the rules

I wish I had a choice of schools! Do most people? In my area they are all very over subscribed.

Sometimes rules change midway, or new ones get brought in, or parents agree with the rules overall bar one or two (honestly, why does sock colour matter?!?) , or a teacher misinterprets (not necessarily maliciously) a rule. I teach DD not to sweat the small stuff , that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying . Like when she got told off her hair was properly up in a clip (by school regs)but she didn’t also have a hair tie in it.

The best state secondary in my area only has polo tops and jumpers for uniform, similar to a typical primary school really.

My DS goes to a different school with a lot of issues and below average results (as good school is always oversubscribed) with blazers, ties etc. They always try and make a huge deal of uniform, down to tiny details, particularly when a new head comes in and tries to make a point.

It just feels like they do this because it’s an easy way to make a statement without actually addressing and trying to change the bigger problems the school faces 😔

Genuinely curious about what you would consider to be a ridiculous rule.
I worked in schools for 25 years. Strict rules were pushed out with vigour every September, but gradually they started to slide…..